The official “Princesses: Long Island” reading list

While ratings are down for Bravo’s “Princesses: Long Island”—episode 3 only garnered 887,000 viewers, 350,000 less than the premiere, according to Newsday—the number of people publicly sharing their opinion on the reality show appears to be on the rise.

Maybe it’s because the show’s crass stereotypes have hit a nerve with so many people, or maybe it’s because the show’s crass stereotypes are so much fun to write about. Either way, it’s impossible to step out into the blogosphere without tripping over a “Princesses” post (um, especially if you have a “Princesses” Google Alert set up).

Although “Princesses” is not what you would call a very political show, it has attracted the (negative) attention of one politician. Today on The Huffington Post, New York Congressman Steve Israel, who represents the girls’ part of Long Island, slams the show and it’s characters for being “disgraceful, misleading, and fuel anti-Semetic stereotypes.” Israel, who says he has fought his whole life to “combat this type of hatred,” will not be tuning in, and he hopes we don’t either.

Israel isn’t the first Huffington Post writer to call for a “Princesses” boycott. Last week we wrote about Lindsey Orlofsky, who compared the experience of watching “Princesses” to her 7th grade viewing of the horror film “The Ring.” She is also very liberal in her usage of all caps.

In a characteristically thoughtful New Yorker blog post, Rachel Arons notes that while the “spoiled, materialistic drama queens give Jews a bad name,” the worst part about the show is the way it depicts “a demographic that’s between the young party animals of MTV and the middle-aged wives and divorcees of ‘Real Housewives’: pushing-thirty single women looking for husbands.”

Coming in on the more neutral end of the great “Princesses” debate is our very own Joe Winkler. Yes, the show is “misogynistic and ugly.” But by generating all of this content we’re doing exactly what Bravo wants us to do and giving it more weight than it deserves. In other words, says Winkler, “We’d do better not to talk about it all.” Amen.